ANNUTTER buggering, and THIS one is from SCOTUS, lol

[Dafinch]

Supreme Court rejects controversial election law theory​

Melissa Quinn
Updated Tue, June 27, 2023 at 9:53 AM PDT


Washington — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a controversial theory that would have given state lawmakers unfettered power to set the rules for federal elections in their states, ruling that the so-called "independent state legislative theory" is inconsistent with the Constitution.
In declining to embrace the idea, which stems from an interpretation of the Constitution's Elections Clause, the court left in place a key check on state lawmakers' authority over how federal elections in their states are conducted and their drawing of congressional maps.
The decision is a major victory for voting rights advocates, who feared that a ruling adopting the independent legislature theory would wreak havoc on election systems, and allow state legislatures to operate unchecked when setting federal election rules and drawing voting lines.
Chief Justice John Roberts authored the opinion for the 6-3 majority in the case known as Moore v. Harper, which stems from a dispute in North Carolina. The court ruled that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to review an opinion by the North Carolina Supreme Court against state Republican officials, and said the Constitution's Elections Clause does not grant exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections.
"State courts retain the authority to apply state constitutional restraints when legislatures act under the power conferred upon them by the Elections Clause," Roberts wrote. He was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
"The Elections Clause does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review," Roberts wrote. The Elections Clause states: "the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof."
Though the court concluded that the clause "does not exempt state legislatures from the ordinary constraints imposed by state law," Roberts noted that state courts "do not have free rein."
"We hold only that state courts may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections," the chief justice wrote, meaning that state courts can't overstep and assume the powers granted to the legislatures under the Constitution.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissented, with Thomas writing for the trio that the question before the Supreme Court was moot and the case should be dismissed.
The theory that state legislatures have exclusive authority to set presidential and congressional elections rules without oversight from state courts lay largely dormant for more than 15 years. The concept regained attention after the 2020 presidential election, when then-President Donald Trump's allies raised it as part of efforts to reverse the outcome.
Moore v. Harper arose from the redrawing of North Carolina's congressional map by state Republican legislative leaders after the 2020 Census. The state supreme court invalidated the voting boundaries, finding in a February 2022 decision that they were an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
After a state trial court rejected new congressional voting lines drawn by the GOP-controlled General Assembly, it adopted a map drawn by a group of special masters, to be used only for the 2022 election cycle.
North Carolina Republicans asked the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that under the Elections Clause, state courts did not have the authority to change rules governing the "times, place and manner" of federal elections. By allowing the court-crafted map to be used, they said, the state's judiciary had decided the "manner" in which North Carolina's congressional elections would be held, usurping the power granted to the state legislature.
Months after the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case, the North Carolina Supreme Court reconsidered part of the February 2022 decision that the justices were reviewing. In March, the Supreme Court asked the parties involved — North Carolina GOP legislators, voting rights groups and voters, state election officials and the Biden administration — to submit additional briefs explaining whether it still had the power to decide the case, raising questions of whether the justices would decide the dispute after all.
Then, in late April, the state supreme court's Republican majority overturned the earlier February 2022 ruling that invalidated congressional voting lines drawn by state GOP lawmakers. The ruling from North Carolina's high court effectively gives state lawmakers the green-light to draw its congressional map to favor GOP candidates.
In finding that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to review the state high court's decision — which said the GOP-crafted congressional redistricting plan was unlawful — Roberts said the subsequent state court action in recent months does not render the case moot.
"Although partisan gerrymandering claims are no longer viable under the North Carolina Constitution, the North Carolina Supreme Court has done nothing to alter the effect of the judgment in Harper I enjoining the use of the 2021 maps. As a result, the legislative defendants' path to complete relief runs through this Court," he wrote. Harper I is the North Carolina Supreme Court's February 2022 decision.
Before the court agreed to take up the appeal from North Carolina Republicans, the three justices who ultimately dissented — Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch — expressed support for the independent state legislature theory. A fourth, Kavanaugh, urged the Supreme Court to consider the issue.
In an opinion concurring with the court's judgment, Kavanaugh said the majority "correctly concludes" that state laws governing federal elections are subject to review by state courts, including to ensure they comply with state constitutions.
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[Dafinch]

Trump’s version of US election law rejected once and for all (TAKE that ROCK HARD COCK up the ass, Righty SCUM! ​

Steven Senne/AP
271
Zachary B. Wolf
Tue, June 27, 2023 at 2:09 PM PDT


A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.
The dual track realities of American democracy go like this:

• Former President Donald Trump is in a strong position, for now, to be one of two major presidential options presented to US voters in 2024.
• At the same time, the institutions on which the foundation of the US government are built continue the slow work of neutralizing a potential repeat of his previous attempt to sidestep the process and overturn the election.

The news Tuesday is that the US Supreme Court squarely rejected the fringe legal theory by which far-right activists and supporters of Trump hoped to be able to ignore election outcomes.
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Add that ruling to these other concrete developments and percolations:

• A law to preempt insurrection 2.0. Congress last year passed a law to clarify that, no, the vice president cannot throw out electoral votes the president doesn’t like.
• Accountability for fake elector scheme. The Justice Department, in the form of special counsel Jack Smith, appears to be refocused on the Trump supporters who signed false certificates to the federal government, asserting they were the rightful electors for Trump in seven battleground states won by Joe Biden.

But it is Tuesday’s move by the Supreme Court that could be among the most consequential since it invalidates the fringe “independent state legislature” theory upon which Trump’s 2020 scheme was based.

What exactly did the Supreme Court do?​

The court’s liberal justices were joined by three members of its conservative majority to disabuse everyone of the idea that for hundreds of years Americans have been misinterpreting the word “legislature.”
The US Constitution’s elections clause stipulates that federal elections “shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature.” Under the independent state legislature theory, now rejected by the Supreme Court, that means that state legislatures alone are in charge of federal elections and therefore are unaccountable to state courts.
The case at hand – Moore v. Harper – had to do with a 2022 North Carolina congressional map rejected by the state’s Supreme Court. But if justices had agreed that state legislatures were immune from state courts on these questions, it would have validated the idea pushed by Trump in 2020 that state legislatures could ignore election results and install their own presidential electors too. Read more about the implications for 2024.

What did Trump want in 2020?​

Trump supporters thought a riff on the independent state legislature theory, written by the former Trump lawyer John Eastman, could have kept him in office past 2020, even though he lost the election.
Coincidentally, Eastman, who never thought the Supreme Court would endorse his scheme, is currently fighting to keep his law license in California, where disciplinary attorneys want him disbarred for his plan to overturn the 2020 election results.
Inspired by Eastman, Trump wanted then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject electors from key states, where Trump falsely alleged voter fraud, and hope that Republican-controlled state legislatures would select new electors to keep him in the White House.

The court did not wait for a 2020 repeat​

Rather than wait for that kind of nightmare scenario – where electors selected by voters could be replaced by a partisan state legislature without state court review – a 6-3 Supreme Court majority got ahead of things.
“The Elections Clause does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority, which also included the Trump-nominated Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Why the court may have acted now​

CNN’s Joan Biskupic said it’s important that Roberts and the majority acted on the merits of the case, rejecting the independent state legislature theory when they could simply have sidestepped the issue.
“I think with 2024 looming, they probably thought, do it now, because there were challenges coming down the road that were similar,” Biskupic said on “Inside Politics” on Tuesday. “Do it now, do it outside of a presidential election year and get it done with.”

Trump still defends his push to sidestep voters​

Trump, meanwhile, still believes the 2020 election should have been overturned and legislators in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, among other states, would have given him their electoral votes.
“(Pence) should have put the votes back to the state legislatures and I think we would have had a different outcome. I really do,” a combative Trump told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during a CNN town hall in May.
It’s not news that Trump and his supporters take an alternate reality view of the law. They have similarly rejected his indictment for conspiracy and mishandling national security material as a politically motivated witch hunt.
They will continue to reject the charges even after CNN on Monday published audio of Trump meeting with people who did not have security clearance, rustling papers he said were a Pentagon battle plan for Iran, and seeming to admit that he did not have the power to declassify them.

Two things can be true​

“We have to be able to see the reality that two things can be true at the same time,” CNN’s political director David Chalian said on “Inside Politics” on Tuesday.
“This can be a dangerous, reckless, perhaps criminal bit of behavior by a former president of the United States, and it may not actually damage him politically – may not – inside the context of a Republican nomination race.”
Winning the Republican primary, by the way, requires appealing to a very different set of voters than winning the White House.

What does this say about the Supreme Court?​

It’s also true that despite a decisive rejection of a fringe legal theory, there has been a clear rightward shift at the Supreme Court. It ended nationwide abortion rights by overturning Roe v. Wade and invalidated powers long utilized for public safety by the Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies.
But on questions of the democratic process, multiple decisions this month have confounded the perception that a new conservative majority is bent on remaking the country.
In decisions this term, for instance, the justices declined to further erode the Voting Rights Act and ruled that Alabama must redraw congressional maps to include a new majority-Black district. That decision will have repercussions – already seen with a case involving Louisiana’s congressional map – that could jeopardize Republicans’ control of the House.
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